Back in Virginia
18 October 2014
• Reedville VA
by Mike
Back in Virginia again.
Up early in the Solomon's, weigh anchor and we were off in dead calm. We learned another cruising lesson yesterday, this one to do with keeping the anchor chain clean while hauling it aboard. Folks go to considerable expense, bother and effort putting in deck wash down pumps, buying specialized brushes and such all towards the goal of having a clean anchor line come aboard. As most of you know, when you anchor in good holding that usually means some form of mud, and when you hoist everything back aboard not only the anchor, but whatever part of the chain was in or lying in the mud comes up all gooey and the challenge is to clean it off prior to stowage below. We were among the ones struggling with the mud. Then Alan and Heather passed along a tip that they got from folks that they met aboard Christata (sp?). Their solution? Merely haul up the chain stopping every once in a while to give it a shake in the water. I tried it this AM and damn if it doesn't work. The only thing left with any mud on it at all was the anchor itself and a lot of that was gone too.
Anyway, off we went with the main and jib up and within a hour the wind had picked up to the point that we throttled back on the motor. We left it running to charge up the batteries but we were sailing along at what for Nelleke was a smoking pace - 7.5 kn. Man were we living large! But then, as usual the weather witches lied to us. The 10-15 kn became 15-20 gusting higher, then suddenly they were issuing small craft advisories etc. Great! Looking behind us we could see that the anchorage at the Solomon's must have virtually emptied out and the horizon was dotted with sails all chasing us down the shore.
Moonlight Maid and Nelleke had made plans for a BBQ tonight and for a while it looked as though we might be able to persuade our friends Bradd and Maeve from Sampatecho to join us, but as we were turning into Reedville we heard that they elected to head on to Deltaville only 16 nm further along, so perhaps we will meet up with them somewhere downstream.
The anchorage at Reedville is extremely well protected so if the forecasted heavy weather is right we should be OK. There have been a steady stream of other boats, some of which we recognize from the last anchorage and some that are new to us, filing in looking for a spot out of the Bay. Just opposite our little patch of mud is a seafood deli and I went ashore to get a few things to include in the Q tonight. It now seems that we will be dining on crab cakes, chicken breasts, sausages,bean salad and roast potatoes and carrots all ashes down with Cesars, run and stuff, or vodka and stuff.
Yumm. Slurp. Burp.
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